Well, it's his book, so he always has plausible denial. He's talented enough to write himself out of any plot hole, I believe.earthbrah wrote:Malik23 wrote:I think it has to do with the nature of the command Linden made. She said, "Show me the truth!" The truth that she commanded was about seeing, not knowing. The descriptions that immediately follow her command deal solely with the appearances of her companions in Melenkurion Skyweir. The rest of what she learned was told to her by Roger, and he certainly could have lied to her.Only one problem with this theory: why didn't the "truth," given to her by the power of command, include this extremely useful information? How could Roger lie to her about his intention to rouse the worm, when she has just given the command to know the truth?
Even if SRD goofed here, he certainly seems to have plausible denial intact.
But the interpretation you presented above bugs me worse than the plot hole. The Power of Command would have to be an extremely literal function of Earthpower; the Land would have to work rather mechanically in processing Linden's request. Surely if it can interpret her words at all, it must do so by interpreting her intent behind the words, and not merely their literal meaning. And unless she meant explicitly, "Show me the real appearance behind these illusory facades," I don't see how the Power of Command could apply her words in such a limited fashion, as you're suggesting, without itself being incorrect--and incorrect for a purely mechanical limitation (i.e. processing pure syntactic form, rather than semantic meaning).
Instead of such a specific visual intention, I believe Linden meant something more general with her command, like, "If there is trickery here, let me detect it." She didn't want to be fooled about their intentions, not merely their looks.
Earthpower is organic, and "spiritual," if you want to use that term (though I doubt Donaldson would use it). It relates to the person, not to mechanical, discrete functions. Thus, I believe the Land knew exactly what she meant--beyond the literal translation of her sentence--and I believe Linden meant more than visual appearance. After all, she's a woman who is intimately acquainted with healthsense. For her, seeing the truth would include seeing whether or not a person is lying.
And if we're going to impose a literal interpretation of "truth" anyway, we'd have to insist that appearances aren't true or false. Statements are true or false. "Truth" is a logical qualifier, not an appraisal of visual accuracy. So your interpretation already moves up a step or two beyond the pure logical, syntactic structure of her particular Command sentence, on to a level of figurative interpretation. If we're going to make this move at all, we're in the realm of interpretation: which figurative level we believe was the author's intent.
Going strictly on what we know about the author's intentions, we can look at other crucial examples of where he uses "truth" or "true." When he writes, "be true" in LFB, for instance, he doesn't mean: "Don't wrap yourself in a visual illusion." He means be yourself, be authentic. And I think that's what the Power of Command did in this instance: it forced Roger and the Croyel to reveal themselves, not in how they look, but who they are as people. Yes, this entails seeing their appearance. But appearance was only important as a visual cue to identity. And that's what she was really after.
Besides, there's no reason to assume that Roger was lying about his intention to use the PoC to "become a god." What else could he possibly want that would be more to his advantage?
